lassesen 3:25 pm on July 25, 2023

Chelation and ME/CFS

I saw a comment on a post claiming that chelation is all that is needed. Really? I have heard that same claim being made for over 25 years — so what is the peer review evidence.

Searches and Results

Chelation ME/CFS – 2 studies
- “The recognition of these processes implies, mechanistically, that therapeutic benefit is potentially to be had from antioxidants, from anti-inflammatories, from iron chelators,” [2022] No evidence, just hypothesis
- Part of an extensive treatment, those that did everything improved. [2013]
chelation small intestine bacterial overgrowth 5 studies – none applicable
chelation irritable bowel syndrome 24 results – none applicable

Doing further searches for high levels of

Looking at various metals, we found results for mercury:

Evidence supporting a link between dental amalgams and chronic illness, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and suicide. [2014]
Improved chronic fatigue symptoms after removal of mercury in patient with increased mercury concentration in hair toxic mineral assay: a case. [2012]
The frequency of mercury intolerance in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy controls. [1999]
“The reactivity of lymphocytes to metals declined after dental metal removal, and 83 patients (76%) showed long-term health improvement, 24 patients (22%) showed unchanged health and two of them (2%) showed worsening of symptoms ” [2006]

A definitive study

The paper below found no evidence of systematic high levels of minerals for people with ME/CFS.

Vitamin and mineral status in chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis [2017]

Bottom Line

Labs do not show evidence supporting a need to have chelation. There are no studies showing that it is effective — yes, there is speculation but after over 30 years the absence of study evidence is pretty condemning for it.

People may improve — yes! It is called the Placebo effect, and you can get real improvement from the placebo effect. How? Believing that it will work will reduce your stress levels and thus improves the microbiome.

For those that claim that it helps “Show me the peer review studies!” I work on gold standard evidence not what Jack told Jane based on what Sue told her.

R B 6:32 pm on July 25, 2023

Hi Ken,

Your blog post on nutrients is very interesting to me, because I have a friend with Fibromyalgia who has been talking with me about iodine. In the “definitive study” from 2017 you link to, iodine is only mentioned in one of the cited studies, herehttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2007.05.014. The 2017 paper says about that iodine study that it found “no statistically significant difference between patients and controls.” However, in the iodine paper, they show in Table 2 that urine iodine was lower in FM patients compared to controls, with p-value of 0.001 – that seems like a significant difference to me; am I missing something?

Also, daily recommended values of nutrients are not necessarily accurate for everyone at all times. The Institute of Medicine sets those standards, and in them they will often say that they are only going off of available studies – they are not conducting their own studies – and these studies are often animal studies. They also tend to take a cautious and conservative approach. For example, in their recommendations for boronhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222310/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK222310.pdf, they state plainly that they don’t know exactly how much boron we need (Pg 512), and they invite researchers to investigate higher amounts than the upper tolerable limit (Pg 513). Their recommendations haven’t been updated since 2001, and in them they state “The collective body of evidence, however, has yet to establish a clear biological function for boron in humans” (Pg 512); but this statement seems to be inaccurate, see herehttps://doi.org/10.1289%2Fehp.94102s783, herehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712861/, herehttps://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23169147, and herehttps://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz110. My point is that the official recommended daily intakes are not necessarily what a person really needs, it’s just a very educated, conservative guess based off of sometimes limited data. Thus, the amounts of iodine in that 1 study cited by the 2017 review may or may not be what the population really needs, and the FM patients seemed to have lower than the control group.

This is not peer-reviewed, but it is a fairly decently-reasoned opinion on iodine by some medical doctors: The Wolff-Chaikov effecthttps://www.optimox.com/content/Iodine%20Research%20Resources/IOD04.pdf, in which extra iodine in the body causes a rise in TSH and a reduction in thyroid hormone, was never actually proven. This effect is also the basis of the Institute of Medicine’s conservative upper daily limit of iodine (Pg 280). The Japanese population study cited in the IM’s assessment (pg 280) is further contextualized in the W-C paper I linked to (page 113). The point is that our iodine requirements are not well understood, at least it seems that we should do more research on higher doses of iodine. Those same medical doctors have done their own researchhttps://www.optimox.com/content/Iodine%20Research%20Resources/IOD10.pdf and found 24hr load urine tests and higher doses of iodine helps their patients. This womanhttps://steppingstonesliving.com/hypothyroidism-hashimotos-iodine/ had her thyroid cancer reversed with high doses of iodine and monitoring with load testing of urine; she used iodine levels much, much higher than the upper limits set by the Institute of Medicine.

My point? Your blog post made me wonder about the role of nutrition in FM, not only of heavy metals and chelation, and it led me to dig in and conclude that nutrients – perhaps iodine – do play a role in FM.

Some papers I want to investigate further:

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F21501327211038433 https://meridianvalleylab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Flechas-Oxytocin-Fibro.pdf https://doi.org/10.3109/13590849208997961 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2018.04.056 https://doi.org/10.1177/21501327211038433

Thank you for your work, Ken!

-Robert
- lassesen 1:44 pm on August 2, 2023
  
  Many thanks for the comment. Your comment about iodine are very valid. While we have millions of studies done and published on PubMed, we often lack sufficient information for many reasons: bad study design, study was never replicated to confirm earlier findings, and many more.
  
  At a personal level, the best way forward is to get your iodine level tested and if below the middle of the normal range, then supplement.
RB 11:51 am on August 3, 2023

Thanks, Ken!

Lol, I hit “reply” when your blog post came in my email inbox – I didn’t know that it would post here as a comment! But that’s fine.

After reading about the Iodine Project – https://www.optimox.com/education/ – I found that a 24 hr urine “load” test for iodine is what they recommend. Can get it done here – https://www.hakalalabs.com/24-Hour-Urine-Iodine-Loading-Test-Kit_p_45.html

Lynn Farrow’s book is helpful – https://amzn.to/47eltMp, as well as Dr. Brownstein’s – https://amzn.to/3OodbsU

From the resources I shared above, it seems that one cannot necessarily merely supplement iodine; often, folks have to supplement other “co-factor” nutrients like selenium and Vitamin C to name a few.

I’m still in the middle of researching nutrients and nutrient testing – have a lot more research to do. But I’ll report back once I have something useful to share.

Thank you for your labors, Ken!

-R
Lance 6:09 pm on November 21, 2024

Metal Chelation Therapy only makes sense if someone knows, they were exposed to larger, significant amounts of Metals. I for example serviced Metal deburring machines in Metal Fab shops. The machines were full of various dusts from the deburring and deslagging process of previously plasma cut parts. Aluminum dust, Carbon steel dust, stainless steel dust etc.. The dust particles ranged from nano to sand corn size. Lot’s of airborne particles. I got them on my skin, in my hair, breathed them in and swallowed them down with saliva while working on those nasty machines. I was stupid. I didn’t wear masks all the time. Some days I would probably inhale and swallow dust amounts in the 0.5 – 1 Gramm range. Then of course some the nano particles would get absorbed through the skin when sweating. This happened for 3 and 1/2 years until I got food poisoning when I had to go to Puebla Mexico for programming and testing an automotive press line. I went there healthy on July 10th 2023 and returned with a destroyed gut and extreme fatigue and gassy smell rising from my stomach on August 17th 2023.
Then I worked on a few more of those crappy, metal dust filled machines a few more times after my return and that basically spilled over my barrel. 4 months after my return from Mexico I had to surrender to severe fatigue. It took doctors 10 months to finally grant me the diagnosis ME/ CFS. Now in my case a metal chelation therapy would actually make sense because I‘ve inhaled, swallowed and soaked up significant amounts at my job. More than a normal person will in their lifetime. On top of that I did a lot of driving on freeways for my job which adds an extra amount from the truck and car exhausts. But for anyone who hasn’t had that sort of known and significant exposure yet still has ME/ CFS, it wouldn’t make sense to do a chelation therapy because that definitely didn’t cause them to develop ME/ CFS. They need to search for other contributors.